Politico: Impeachment a Flop in Key Suburban Swing District

By Jim HayekOctober 6, 2019

Politico‘s Andrew Desiderio attended six town halls in one day for swing-district Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL) — and discovered that voters do not like impeachment. In fact, many support President Donald Trump’s criticism of former Vice President Joe Biden.
Casten defeated long-term incumbent Republican Peter Roskam last fall in the 6th congressional district of Illinois, in the far western suburbs of Chicago, as part of a nationwide Democratic sweep of suburban districts.

But his left-wing policies and bare-knuckle style were never a good fit — and now he is facing pushback from constituents who are upset that he is backing Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and the left in their attempt to force Trump out of office.

Desiderio — who mis-identifies Casten as a “soft-spoken lawmaker” (the Wall Street Journal called him a “smash-mouth”)

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery.

Casten as he spoke with constituents across his district, and found that many “never thought that this particular Democrat would be leaning so forcefully into an impeachment inquiry against a Republican president.”

He also noted that “Trump’s efforts to paint Biden as corrupt for trying to oust a prosecutor who at one point was investigating a company tied to his son Hunter appeared to resonate among his supporters who attended Casten’s town halls — some of whom were wearing “Make America Great Again” hats and “Trump 2020” t-shirts.” One constituent “asked Casten why he wasn’t condemning Biden’s actions.”

One constituent, Steven Wood, “remains convinced that Trump did nothing wrong, and he took issue with the way Casten described the president’s claims about Biden, in particular his declarative statement that Trump and his supporters are ‘actively suppressing facts.’”

Casten did admit that Trump had done better than former President Barack Obama in arming Ukraine against Russia.

Otherwise, Desiderio found, constituents were much more focused on public policy issues than on impeachment — even liberal constituents: “[M]any liberal voters across Illinois’ 6th Congressional District, while supportive of the impeachment effort, don’t want policy priorities like gun control and climate change to take a back seat. At one of the town halls, impeachment didn’t come up even once.”

Casten is considered vulnerable in 2020 and may face a tough re-election fight against Republican Jeanne Ives, who narrowly lost in the GOP primary for governor in 2018 and has entered the race for the 6th.

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